A CARAVAN JOURNEY THROUGH ABYSSINIA
Photograph by Harry V. Harlan
THE REMAINS OF THE BETTER SECTION OF PORTUGUESE GONDAR
That Gondar was a great city in its prime seems proved by its vast area of tumbled stone
overgrown with brush, where the less important personages lived, and by another section, of
beautiful stone walls, ruins of churches, monasteries, and medieval castles, where the officials
were housed. An imposing view is had over numerous blocks of walls toward the larger
castle, with its towers notching the sky line (see text, pages 661 and 663).
it came to the surface again. In order to
impress us with the full undesirability of
hell, all candles were extinguished, and
we felt our way along the walls in abso
lute darkness for many minutes.
This experience is one of the major
thrills of Lalibela to the pilgrims, and the
walls were grimed by the thousands of
hands that had felt their way through in
the past few days. Many of those hands
were deformed by leprosy and scores of
others bore actively infectious ulcers and
other ailments.
WIIPS CLEAR WAY FOR PROCESSION
Lalibela's Christmas morning came.
The festivities began early. The crowds
had assembled long before we arrived,
but space was reserved for us on the wall
of the partitions surrounding Mascali
Jesus, the church where the celebration
was to take place.
A procession of
priests, dancing and singing, was to en
circle the wall, while a second detachment
marched through the tightly packed
courtyard about the church.
Of the 30,000 pilgrims who came to
witness the rites, not more than I,ooo
could have seen the whole, though the
line of encircling priests must have been
visible from all parts of the village.
When the procession started, the walls
where the priests were to go were
jammed with spectators. At the head of
the procession marched three youths car
rying long leather whips, with which they
cleared the way.
Such whipping is not resented here.
In fact, we ourselves had been the cause
of such chastisements. We were such a
curiosity in Lalibela that hundreds of
people followed us and ran ahead, crowd
ing about, impeding our movements. The
head priest finally detailed men with
whips to clear paths for us on our nu
merous trips through the villages during
the three days of our stay.
The people could do little else than
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